~ Exploring the human-canine bond

Head Halters: Positive Training or Compulsion Technique?

Today I made a decision: no more head halters for my dogs. I know people who don’t use them because they think halters are just a band-aid, and that they prevent people from teaching their dogs how to walk properly and so on. Some compulsion trainers see them as “soft”, as an excuse for people not to show their dog who’s boss. Others find them to be a nuissance for various reasons.

But I have decided to stop using head halters for this reason: my dogs don’t like them. I am (re)reading Suzanne Clothier’s tremendously important book Bones Would Rain from the Sky, and she is inspiring me to listen to my dogs. I mean really listen, not just see and hear what I want to see and hear. More on this in another post.

So sure, both Hannah and Mira have learned to tolerate halters and each will stand up on their hind legs, put their front paws on my thigh and poke their noses through the halter loop. They will then stand perfectly still while I do up the halter, and walk nicely once it’s done up. I have shaped this and followed techniques advocated in Shaping Success, which obviously worked very well. But Hannah will not take a treat while I do this, which tells me that she is not happy. And Mira’s ears and tail are down when I pull out the halti, and they only come up when she’s sure I have a treat. In other words, they do it for the reward, and because I ask, but they don’t like it.

Kestrel is a different story. She will allow me to do up the halti, but after two months she is still pawing and scratching away at trying to get it off. And then I get annoyed and have to stop and tell her to “quit” and pull her up off the ground and untangle her. We do this half a dozen times a walk. Yet I can walk her to the park on a flat leash if I just put enough effort into it, playing tug and keeping her attention on me. So why not just do that? Why make her be so miserable and have me get in a cranky mood when we’re supposed to be having fun?

(Kestrel, having arrived at the park on a flat collar)

You’ll notice that I have not mentioned Ross. This is because I have never used a halter on Ross. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Suzanne Clothier talks of seeing “the light go out” in a dog’s eyes when you push the wrong way. Ross is so clear with this that I have never been able to use any form of compulsion with him at all. Ever. I just can’t. He looks at me and it is so, so, so clear when I even put a toe across that line. So I have never used the slightest form of compulsion with Ross, and that includes never using a head halter. And guess what? He’s by FAR my most well mannered dog on a leash.

Now why can’t I learn from that? The answer is simply that slapping a head halter on a dog is far easier than how I taught Ross to walk nicely on a leash. And seeing as I keep bringing in new dogs, and that I have more dogs than I have time to properly train, the head halter has become my quick-fix tool. Is it better than other options, such as choke chains, leash corrections, prong collars and the like? I do believe so. But they still are a tool of compulsion.

And that’s the other reason I have decided not to use head halters anymore, i.e. they are compulsion tools. The reason they work is because they control the dog physically – they compel the dog to behave in a certain way, which is what “compulsion” means. Now I completely understand the reason people advocate their use, as I have repeated and believed this myself: they prevent the dog from doing things you don’t want, while you can shape them to do what you do want. With my red dog, Jaz (a fear-biting foster I lived and worked with for 10 months), the halter was a saving grace because I could run her on my bike without fear of her lunging at a passing person and pulling me off my bike. And since she was not safe to run off-leash in public, and since she desperately needed exercise, this was the best option I could come up with at the time.

In hindsight, however, I wonder if the halti didn’t make her worse. Another things head halters do is tone dogs down. Many dogs will be more subdued and quiet while wearing one. Why is this? Well, in addition to the obvious reason that it can’t be pleasant to have such a thing on your face, they also put pressure across the ridge of the nose. Have you ever watched a dog correct another? They will reach over and bite the muzzle of the offending dog, pressing down with their teeth right about where the muzzle strap of a halti will press down when the halter is done up.

In other words, the halti is serving to ‘correct’ your dog. In many dogs this probably isn’t a really big deal, but in a sensitive dog, I suspect this can lead to rather adverse responses. Take a dog who is fearful of people, or another dog, or whatever. The dog starts to lunge at that scary person-dog-thing, and immediately feels pressure on its muzzle. Translation: scary thing = the dog gets a correction. Now, isn’t that exactly what we are trying to avoid, i.e. having the dog receive a punishment around the thing that scares her?

Again in hindsight, what a head halter has allowed me to do is take dogs into situations that otherwise they would be problematic in. So by putting a halti on, I can safely (from my perspective, not from the dog’s) take the dog into a social situation that is over the dog’s head.

Some dogs do fine with this kind of “flooding” experience, and become desensitized and therefore improve. Others, however, get worse. If the dog is continually being put in a situation that is upsetting to them, and then not only not being able to respond properly because it doesn’t have proper control over its body, but is receiving constant corrections from the muzzle strap, I can see that this might serve to heighten a dog’s reactiveness.

So today I am retiring my head halters, and am going to find a better way to help my dogs behave in the way that I need them to in stimulating situations. This is going to mean more work for me but it will only help me become a better partner for my dogs. And that’s what it is all about, for me anyway: developing the best relationship possible with my dogs.

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HOORAY! Head Halters have been touted as the best thing since sliced bread. But head halters can’t be used as a training tool for all dogs. Dogs who moderately pull can be trained to walk well if the owner uses them correctly. (I haven’t seen anyone ever use one correctly, by the way. )

If dogs have other issues, like mine, who reacts poorly to enemy dogs or loud trucks, the head halter can be harmful. It can cause spinal cord injury if the dog lunges. One trainer told me to pull it straight up if my dog was out of control, to force her into a sit position. I told the trainer my dog jumped upwards when I pulled up. She told me that I needed to then bend down and pinch her in the thigh to make her sit. There’s no way I can pull up, bend down and pinch her when she’s in a wild frenzy.

It’s also a myth that the GL magically calms the dog, like a mother’s gentle correction and touches the dog’s head in pressure points that calms them. I thought that was great when I bought mine. I had to wonder though as time passed, if they’re so calming, why do all dogs hate them? 😉

I think it’s despicable that in the name of positive training that advertisers would describe the head halter as acting the same way that halters for horses do (Suzanne explains to the non-horse experts like me that this isn’t at all the case) and also, I was more than a bit dismayed that when I did go to a positive training school the director said in her speech about the halter that people complained that the gentle leader (like the halti) destroyed the dog’s spirit. She then held one up in the air and said, “But isn’t that what you really wanted?” and to my absolute horror, the class laughed and clapped.

Over the years I’ve heard all of these “good things” about the head halter from people who pass what they’ve heard along as if it’s gospel even though many have never actually used one.

Yes, I’ve been told to pull the dog’s head up and around so that she has to look at me when she’s getting all worked up about something. I had been told that this helps calm the dog as it breaks the dog’s view of the scary thing and helps get her mind off it. However, in my experience, trying to obstruct the dog’s vision seems to make them get more anxious, which only makes sense. The dog is afraid of another dog and then it can’t watch what that other dog is doing – naturally it is going to become more agitated.

On a similar note, are you familiar at all with Chris Bach’s “Third Way”? I keep hearing about it but really don’t know anything about her philosophy. I have tried to find info on the internet but somehow her actual philosophy is quite elusive. I don’t want to pay for books if her “third way” is actually a combination of positive and compulsion techniques, or something along that line.

Hi…just wanted to drop in and let you know that my husband and I have gotten a new puppy…no puppy can replace Caribou, but we knew we needed another German Shepherd again. You were so kind in responding to me when I first wrote to you about Caribou’s declining health…so I wanted to share some good news with you as well. Here is my post about our new pup…and another one re: introducing her to our old Golden.

Hi Wendy – Thanks so much for letting me know about your new puppy!! Raven is just adorable and obviously quite special. Isn’t it interesting how they choose us, not the other way around? Argus looks like he’s enjoying having a new little sister, regardless of how pesty. I bet Cariboo had something to do with all those nudges that brought this week girl to to your family.

I hope that Raven helps heal your heart! Thanks for keeping in touch. I had been wondering how you were doing.

Great post! I do use gentle leaders and wonder walkers. I have never cared for the halti specifically for some reason. BUT, I only use them on my own young dogs so they just never learn to pull and I use a gazillion treats so that they are constantly being reinforced for not pulling. I do use them on some older dogs I do daily walks with because they have such a long-standing habit of pulling after years of their owners allowing them to do so and not reinforcing not-pulling. I used a gentle leader on Fancy (malinois) so I could have her out around people and feel secure that I could prevent her from biting anyone.

Do you get Susan Garrett’s March email training tips? Just a couple of days ago she went over how she introduces her puppies to the gentle leader and says that for the first week they ONLY wear the gentle leader for meals not at all for walks. I was blown away by how simple and how brilliant that is, to introduce it having absolutely nothing to do with the leash.

I will probably use a wonder walker (gentle leader/slip lead combo) with Jellybean when we start our quest next week to meet and greet one new person a day. This week we have been building up positive repetitions using the people that she first let pet her two weeks ago.

Yes, I did read that tip by SG. I thought it was ironic that she posted it the day before I wrote my post, but I hadn’t read hers at the time. Must have been something in the air 😉

Susan Garrett compares a head halter (be it a Halti or a Gentle Leader) to a seatbelt, arguing that we don’t much like seatbelts, but they are necessary so we use them. Keep in mind that SG is using the halter as a training tool for agility and is not talking about using it as a behavioural modification tool for dogs with fear and aggression problems. The latter is what I am talking about.

The way I see that comparison is that a seatbelt allows us to put ourselves in situations that are actually dangerous, ie. in fast moving cars. Similarly, the head halter allows us to put our dogs in situations that would otherwise be over their heads. But they don’t necessarily protect the dogs as much as they protect us. They protect us from having our dogs misbehave and getting us into trouble. The head halter allows us to bring a dog who might otherwise bite or lunge close to objects that the dog might bite or lunge at.

Without the halter, we would have to stay further back. Yet staying back is really in the best interest of the dog. It’s US who want to move closer, not the dog. We willingly go into cars and put on a seatbelt to keep us safe while we go faster than nature intended. We can also take off the seatbelt at will. Fearful dogs don’t willingly go into rooms or parks full of people or other dogs or whatnot. So in that sense, the halter is more like a straight jacket than a seatbelt.

Now, imagine being afraid of rats and someone puts you in a straight jacket and then puts you in a room full of rats. Is that going to help you feel less afraid? How about more afraid? From this perspective, I don’t see the head halter as being helpful, and instead it may actually be harmful.

If you need to use something to stop the dog from pulling you down the street the easy walker harness is much better then a head halter. It goes on like any other harness but the buckle is in the front of the chest. that way if the dog pulls he ends up looking at you and there is no chance of harm to their spine or neck. I use one of these if my wife walks one of the dogs. they are stronger then she is so it takes the stress of holding onto them in unexpected situation out of the picture and makes for a comfortable walk. Now I will admit that the reason she needs this aid is because I didn’t really teach my BC’s great leash manners. And I didn’t because I didn’t want to. I love the free spirit of the breed and enjoy both their free thinking and athletic abilities. I always figured if I wanted a dog to walk beside my leg I would get a miniature poodle or something.

I’ve been wanting to look into those harnesses. I hear people raving about them but have not even seen one, let alone tried one. I completely agree with you about the BC spirit and have never been one to do much leash training with my dogs. I do need to walk them on-leash about 2 blocks to the park, however, and since I do that every day, I’ve had to do some work. I don’t have them heel next to me though. They’re allowed to walk ahead of me. They must walk beside me when we cross the road, stop at curbs, and not rip my arm out of its socket. Otherwise I let them do pretty much as they please. And of course as soon as we get to the park, the leashes come OFF 🙂

I, too, would like to try an Easy Walk Harness. We go to obedience training, and they would like me try to a Gentle Leader on my dog – a Goldendoodle – but I tried a loaner during out first week of classes, and he fought it mightily until he got it off. Not fun. I’m wondering if the harness would do the trick, since we are already working on walking without pulling. Maybe it would serve as enough of a reminder to him? I just don’t want to make him hate his walks – he loves them so!

Hmmm, you make some good points but on the other hand, if you flood the person with the rats eventually they aren’t going to be such an aversive and at that point you can begin pairing them with a primary positive reinforcer to eventually give the subject a positive association with the rats: we used this example (only with spiders rather than rats) all the time to help people with fearful dogs at the boarding/training kennel where I worked.

To me the GL is protecting the dog by preventing the dog from being able to bite someone and thus risking forced euthanasia.

I’m talking about keeping the GL on a dog when a person is in close contact with a somewhat fearful dog, I’m not talking about taking out a dog who would lunge at anyone or anything. The GL is IMO totally the wrong tool for that issue especially since if the dog DID lunge in the GL that is where you might run up on soft tissue damage.

The GL prevented Fancy (the malinut) from turning and biting someone who was petting her and allowed her to acclimate to being touched by strangers and eventually be calm enough to take treats from me while she was being touched by strangers and then to take treats from strangers.

Some dogs just HATE head halters. Period. And on those dogs I sometimes use an EZ walk harness. My puppies grow up following me around for pretty much all of their daily caloric needs so I don’t ever having pulling problems in them to solve. I have used the EZ walk harness a few times and they’re fine. A lot of dogs, however, do not like them a heck of a lot better than a GL. They are made by the same company, Premier:order here. I haven’t found them to instantly stop a dog who is in the habit of pulling anywhere near as well as a GL so since I am going to have to do all the work to get the dog to understand that staying close to me is the object, I can just use a flat collar for that really 😉

Jellybean would NOT let a strange man (a guy I know that she had never met) pet her in a busy parking lot on Thursday but she DID do a sit, a wave and a “say please” when asked to with no food in my possession 😀

Certainly you can flood a fearful animal (or person) and then pair what causes the fear with something positive to eventually get the animal to at least accept it. At least it works sometimes (but if it backfires, you have an even bigger problem on your hands).

But this approach still involves the animal experiencing a lot of fear. Do the means really justify the ends? Is putting your animal through a lot of fear justifiable because you think they will be better off in the long run? Better off by who’s standards? And aren’t there gentler ways of getting there?

Taking the example of Fancy, whom you mentioned need a head halter to prevent her from biting while she became accustomed to strangers handling her. Could the outcome (i.e. her letting people touch her) have been accomplished in another way that didn’t involve putting her in a position that made her so afraid that she wanted to bite to protect herself? And isn’t taking away her ability to protect herself a form of punishment and means of perhaps heightening her fear?

From this perspective the head halter is not protecting the dog, it is protecting the person – both the one who might be bit, and the one who might be sued if the dog bites. Protecting the dog would be not putting her in that position in the first place. Does this make sense?

Mira is my dog who does not want to be touched by strangers. As a puppy, I tried the usual socialization with her, taking her places for strangers to meet and pet her. She was terrified. I decided that pushing it would not be in her best interest. Instead I just backed right off and let her be. I built my relationship with her and taught her that I would never put her in a situation that would endanger her – danger from her perspective, not mine. And a lot of stuff was really scary to her.

As she grew up, she grew more confident. We moved very gradually from walking in very isolated parks to being quite comfortable being off leash around people in just about any situation. I did it gradually and I did it all not only with no head halter, but with no leash. I built her confidence in herself and in me, and I also built her enjoyment of play. We then played around people in parks but I always left it up to her if she wanted to approach people or not. People would ask “can I pet your dog” and I would turn to Mira and say “do you want to say hi?” And Mira would usually just make a big wide circle around the person. So I would say to the person “sorry – she’s not really keen on strangers.” And we’d be on our way.

By always giving Mira the choice, she has learned that she can just move away from situations that frighten her. When I was forcing her to meet people, she became very, very quick to bite. Now that she has a choice, she moves away. She has a choice because she is not restrained, and also I do not put her in situations where she cannot choose to move away.

Today Mira goes up to strangers and says hello. Sometimes. Other times she just avoids them. I’m fine with that. In fact I prefer that to Kessie’s obsession with rushing up and greeting every person we pass. I sure hope she grows out of that soon!!

I think Jelly’s willingness to work but not be touched is perfect for her. That may simply be the best option for this dog. I would ask the question, why do you need her to be petted by strangers?

Beth – compulsion is the term used for any kind of force or “compelling” of the dog during training. This can range from relatively benign actions such as pushing the dog’s bum down to make him sit, to the more extreme forms of corrections, pinch collars and the like. Basically, touching the dog or forcing him in any way is compulsion. 100% positive training would involve only ever touching the dog for affection – no collars, leashes, or anything.

This occurred to me in your response to Beth about compulsion: Because for a long time I didn’t even put leashes on my puppies, Fancy immediately thought she was in trouble as soon as a leash and collar went on her. Think about it. Most puppies do not love first having a leash or collar put on them anymore than adult dogs (who are fine with a leash and collar because they have become acclimated to them) like to have a GL put on at first.

I am VERY glad that it worked so well for you to not force things on Mira. I was definitely trying that with Jellybean but I am also in a position where my dogs have to be out and about with other dogs and people frequently since that is what I do.

As to Fancy I don’t know that her biting someone who was petting her was even in her head. I do know that having a GL on her allowed ME the confidence that she COULDN’T bite someone and allowed me to take her to agility trials and other places where otherwise I might have been afraid of having her out. So, no, I don’t think that I was forcing Fancy into any position she couldn’t handle anymore than your putting a leash and collar on any of your dogs to keep control of them in a situation where they could run out and get hit by a car is putting them into a terrible position.

As a dogwalker/petsitter/trainer I always have my dogs out with me so I just don’t have the luxury of allowing them years to decide that people aren’t horrible to be around. Either I get replace that dog or I get the dog to the point where it can safely be around people. I cannot begin to tell you how choosy most trainers are about what dogs they will take on as pets for that reason and how many dogs most trainers go through because of it. I can’t have more than the three dogs I currently have and I won’t get rid of a dog just because it has some issues.

No to whine, but since you’re going on about “well I did this and that and didn’t do the awful things to my dog that you did to your dog” (or that is what I am hearing from you), I was in a fairly terrible situation when I was dealing with all of this with Fancy and was in a much worse position than I even am now with Jellybean in terms of what I could do for her.

Barrie – I’m sorry if my reply came across as a critique of what you are doing with your dogs. Trust me, I have done everything you have done and much of it has worked. I am just trying to rethink things and see if they really work the way I thought they did. All I meant was that head halters can allow us to put our dogs into situations that might be over their heads. In other words, head halters are helpful to US, but not necessarily for the dogs.

I totally understand the necessity to get a dog to be able to function in an environment that it otherwise wouldn’t choose to be in. I have had to do the same. Mira has to be able to function in a very highly stimulating situation every time we step out the door. I live in a high density housing complex with hundreds of children and other dogs, both of which give Mira the heebee jeebees. I cannot walk out my front door without kids coming racing over to meet the dogs or whatnot.

I suspect Mira is much more reactive than Fancy ever was, because when I tried to control her and force her to submit to petting, she immediately started biting in her panic. This was a big wake-up call for me. This was also true of my red dog, that I mentioned earlier. She nipped 2 people the day I brought her home. I worked intensively with her for 10 months, taking her to training classes, using a head halter to control her behaviour around people and other dogs. I worked very hard and taught the dog to tolerate all sorts of stuff that she initially showed a lot of stress around. But what I actually did was not teach her to relax and enjoy but rather to suppress her distress signals. The result? After 10 months of work and a dog who seemed normal, she – with virtually no warning – drove up and nailed a woman in the face, leaving multiple puncture marks. This was a woman the dog knew and had been around extensively. And all this woman did was tilt her head down towards the dog as she reached a hand out to pat her, while the dog had been sitting leaning against her leg.

I have tried to break this down over and over and over again. It made no sense to me for a very long time. Rethinking head halters has opened a new way for me to understand what I might have done wrong with this dog, as she obviously got worse even though I thought she had gotten better.

Clearly you are not dealing with this level of disfunction in your dogs, and many dogs do just fine with head halters and flooding techniques. All I want to bring attention to is that some dogs don’t, and I’m trying to understand why. It’s also hard to know which dogs will and which won’t respond positively to these methods. Having it backfire, like I did, was a real learning experience.
(my red dog was placed on a farm where she never has to meet strangers, and she works cattle twice a day, which requires lots of ankle biting)

Congrats on your DUH moment – aren’t they the best? It is always easier to see training mistakes and ideas in other people’s dogs than in your own. I have this pointed out to me every time I take a lesson or visit one of my more dog savvy friends. As for training incompatible behaviours, I was just reading what Suzanne Clothier has to say on that last night! She points out that this is a very effective technique when (and only when) you actually select a behaviour that makes it literally impossible for the dog to do the behaviour you don’t want it to do. Such as bark with a toy in it’s mouth. Brilliant! I should try that with Ross…

As I said, that was what I was hearing, not necessarily what you were saying and I would be the first to admit that I am very defensive about Fancy and what we’ve gone through together.

Somehow I missed hearing about your red dog. That is a chilling story though! And it is good to think about why one is using any type of equipment and what the possible repercussions might be. I hadn’t thought about the GL suppressing warning signals the same way that people correcting a dog for growling over a bone rather than teaching the dog the benefit of allowing a person to take the bone would.

Jellybean has had a slightly crazy day and I think I am going to order the flower essence Beth recommended if both of you SWEAR to me that I cannot cause any damage with it??